For my 50th birthday I am getting chickens. Not the sort that come in a clear plastic dome with a ‘best before’ date printed on it – but real, live ones.

This has been a dream of mine for ages, or so I thought.

For years I had pictured myself wearing a long checked apron and (for some reason) clogs, with a lovely wicker basket, patting chickens and gathering white, blue and tinted eggs.

I had decided on breeds. For me its all about the eggs, so I’d mentally chosen a selection of Leghorns, Marans, Araucanas, Rhode Island Reds and Orpingtons. My future chickens were already named after my favourite country singers: Dolly, Shelby, Tammy, Alison and possibly a Nancy.

Recently I read an article – penned by a journalist on this newspaper – that had me guffawing and carefully double-checking its publication date. Nope, it wasn’t the first of April and yes, it really was about people in the UK buying high visibility jackets for hens that stray onto busy roads.

High visibility jackets are now all the vogue for chicken-livered hens

As the owner of a cockerel and a small brood here in rural Majorca, I found it deeply puzzling. After all what kind of bird-brained keeper of poultry living in a built up area would be careless enough to allow his flock to strut off into busy traffic and who in his right mind would invest in a pink or yellow hen jacket priced at £12?

Well, I hang my head in shame. It seems that ‘high vis’ jackets are the thin end of the wedge. There’s a whole industry out there touting hen apparel of the… Read more

Twenty years seems like one heck of a long time. Well, it did to me this week when I woke up to the fact that the Scotsman and I had been married that long. We didn’t make a song and dance about our anniversary but instead resolved to buy something that we both really, really wanted. Private jet? Bijoux chateau? Luxury holiday? Even a dishwasher? (oh let’s not return to that old chestnut), Actually, no. We opted for a new chicken house.

It's easy to be a happy chicken in Majorca

Of course, it’s not just any chicken house. Our little beauty is a sturdy wooden hut lovingly crafted by hand in rural Majorca at a fraction of the price one might pay in the capital of Palma or elsewhere for that matter. Tomeu, chicken hut maestro, stood thoughtfully at our side as we squatted broodily at the hut’s door on a strip of sun scorched field, and asked… Read more

Did you ever see the film, Chicken Run? Well I did, and from that day forth I began to see chickens in a whole new light. The silly squawk, Max Wall strut and glassy eye suddenly seemed endearing and the sight of goose pimpled, sallow torsos and necks hanging limply from butchers hooks began to make me wince.

Illegal cock fighting was broken up by Spanish police

So, it’s not really surprising that my eye was caught by news of a police scoop-surely coop?-in Castellón whenmore than one hundred people were caught betting at a cock fight. A Policía Nacional armed response unit of 30 officers with weaponry that wouldn’t have looked out of a place in a Schwarzenegger movie burst into the illegal premises and rounded up the suspects. Sixteen ringleaders were arrested of crimes against ‘fauna and flora’ and the captive game cocks were despatched to an animal refuge centre. Some animal campaigners… Read more